On the 2025 AMUG Convention, trade leaders delivered a transparent message: additive manufacturing is maturing past prototyping and hype, pushed by real-world calls for for localisation, sustainability, and manufacturing agility. Executives from Würth Additive Group, Stratasys, DMG MORI, GoEngineer, and SME converged round a shared theme—expertise alone is not sufficient. Adoption hinges on quantifiable worth, course of integration, workforce readiness, and a shift away from proprietary ecosystems. With lifecycle evaluation, decentralised manufacturing, and AI-powered design gaining traction, the additive manufacturing sector is recalibrating for scale and resilience throughout each industrial and consumer-facing functions.
Key Takeaways from the Diamond Sponsor panel
The Monday panel, moderated by Adam J. Penna, drew out insights from the convention’s Diamond sponsors, emphasizing a strategic dedication to additive manufacturing.
Additive’s future relies upon as a lot on integration and training because it does on expertise: Coaching, software program usability, and requirements can be as decisive as 3D printer specs or materials advances.
Generative AI is decreasing inventive obstacles, simply as additive tech is turning into cheaper and extra obtainable. The intersection of AI and AM may set off a brand new wave of decentralised, design-driven manufacturing.
Sustainability will not be a ‘good to have’—it’s aligning with procurement logic, particularly when it additionally delivers value, velocity, and operational continuity.
Emergency logistics is a hidden emissions sink: whereas flying to ship a lacking bolt may be an excessive case there’s a enormous sustainability argument for distributed additive manufacturing.
Additive Manufacturing Leaders Spotlight AI, Automation and Productiveness Gaps
Representing a cross-section of stakeholders from machine OEMs to digital options suppliers, the panelists underscored the vital position of commercial AM in reshaping provide chains, nationwide protection, and manufacturing resilience.
Talking on behalf of SME, a nonprofit that champions manufacturing innovation, Stacey Eeman, Director of Trade Technique, made the group’s mission clear, “We’re right here to assist convene and educate… to construct provider resiliency and competitiveness for nationwide safety.” SME’s presence, she added, is tightly linked to its emphasis on defense-sector adoption and cross-sector information switch.
Stratasys, a cornerstone of polymer additive manufacturing, is shifting its posture to align with extra outlined industrial outcomes. “We take care of a few of the most difficult prospects within the enterprise; they’re arising with the toughest issues,” mentioned Foster Ferguson, VP of Industrial Enterprise at Stratasys. Drawing from his twenty years of service within the U.S. Marine Corps, Ferguson emphasised the significance of listening to end-users to align product growth with mission-critical wants.
AJ Strandquist, CEO of Würth Additive Group, highlighted the corporate’s strategic evolution from a distribution-focused enterprise right into a digital manufacturing options supplier. Initially embedding AM to help inner manufacturing, Würth rapidly found the authorized, IP, and compliance complexities of integrating AM at scale. This led to the event of a proprietary software program platform designed to handle digital stock and manufacturing workflows. “We realized internally what was required,” Strandquist famous, “and ended up bringing it to the present.”
DMG MORI’s Additive Options Normal Supervisor Alex Richard framed additive as a part of a broader transformation of commercial expertise portfolios. His crew, overseeing each gross sales and engineering throughout the U.S., is integrating additive into subtractive-heavy buyer bases, with a view to providing hybrid manufacturing ecosystems. “The necessity for future manufacturing to incorporate additive,” he mentioned, “is now foundational.”
Tyler Reid, VP of Digital Manufacturing at GoEngineer, delivered a grassroots perspective rooted in engineering enablement. “We convert dreamers into builders,” he mentioned, referencing the agency’s emphasis on technical enablement. With almost 20 technical workers on-site, GoEngineer—one of many largest value-added resellers —focuses on instrument entry, hands-on help, and vertical integration of design-to-print workflows.
“We’re beginning to see simply glimpses of [AI], but it surely’s a kind of expertise that as quickly because it hits, it hits onerous,” mentioned Reid. “We have to work out find out how to neatly implement AI into product workflows—making an attempt to get to some extent the place additive options are prepared for manufacturing.” He additionally projected a near-term surge in consumer-facing 3D printing, likening the impact of generative design and AI to a tipping level in visible inspiration. “The barrier to creation is about to break down. Three years from now, client demand for private printers can be on one other degree.”
Ferguson of Stratasys strengthened that AI and automation are solely a part of the answer. “The actual downside is framing the issue. What are we making an attempt to unravel?” he mentioned, including that strategic partnerships can be important as no single OEM can cowl your entire worth chain. Stratasys, for instance, more and more works with companions throughout post-processing and validation applied sciences to ship what Ferguson known as “site-to-site repeatability and accuracy” at scale. He careworn that past the seen facets of polymer 3D printing, the backend infrastructure—from supplies logistics to subject service—is what permits scale.
For metal-focused manufacturing, DMG MORI’s Richard outlined a problem rooted in long-term industrial productiveness. He underscored that conventional subtractive machines are unlikely to get replaced one-for-one as a result of demographic and financial constraints. “There are 5 million machine instruments on the market now. Collectively, the trade will most likely solely construct one million extra over the subsequent 30 years,” he mentioned. “We don’t have the workforce to construct or function machines at that historic scale.”
Richard emphasised that his crew is addressing this productiveness hole by engineering methods able to producing 5 occasions extra output than right now’s customary machines. DMG MORI’s focus lies within the complete course of chain—design, construct, and post-process—with additive enjoying an more and more integral position. “It’s about how we help that course of chain… how will we do it effectively, how will we make particular person machines extra productive, and the way will we construct methods that may help extra with fewer individuals?”
From Prototype to Manufacturing: Additive Manufacturing’s Push into Protection and Distributed Logistics
AJ Strandquist, CEO of Würth Additive Group, emphasised the systemic challenges of scaling AM past prototyping. “Folks discuss serial manufacturing and assume 50,000 items in a single batch,” he mentioned. “However the true trick is 50,000 prints in 50,000 areas—how do I acquire the paperwork for that?” His crew’s reply is a software program platform constructed round legacy enterprise necessities. “They’re not going to alter for us,” he added. “So the query turns into, how do you are taking their course of and their framework and construct round it?”
Würth’s software program, first unveiled eventually yr’s AMUG Convention, is designed to handle the executive bottlenecks of decentralized half manufacturing, guaranteeing traceability, certification, and high quality documentation at scale. This infrastructure is crucial for functions akin to forward-positioned stock and digital warehousing, notably in army logistics. “You don’t need to be a free thread,” Strandquist famous. “You need to be woven into the material of operations.”
DMG MORI described how the corporate has developed its additive machines into hybrid methods able to each subtractive and additive processes. The army sector, lengthy an early adopter of AM for prototyping and tooling, is now pushing for operational deployment. The Military built-in CAD fashions and digital engineering practices for the primary time on the XM30 next-gen fight automobile, defined SME’s Eeman. “That’s an enormous milestone. It exhibits that digital engineering is lastly connecting with real-world protection manufacturing.”
Ferguson of Stratasys pointed to actual traction in airframe and protection elements. “We’ve had robust success with the U.S. Air Drive and NAVSEA,” he mentioned. The addressable market is substantial—he cited a $27 billion alternative in aerospace half manufacturing—however profitable it requires not simply {hardware}, however certified, repeatable, traceable workflows.
Strandquist added that usability and mission-readiness are essential for frontline adoption. Drawing inspiration from the easy educational cartoon as soon as printed on Bazooka packaging, he underscored that additive methods should be intuitive sufficient to function underneath strain. “In case you can prepare somebody to fireplace a rocket, you possibly can prepare them to run an FDM printer,” he mentioned.
But not all voices supported the continued prioritisation of the protection sector. Tyler Reid, VP of Digital Manufacturing at GoEngineer, questioned whether or not the trade had grown too slender. “Additive continues to be simply 0.2% of world manufacturing,” he mentioned. “Aerospace and protection are thrilling, however closely regulated and onerous to scale. We have to broaden into tooling and fixturing—accessible areas the place manufacturing is real looking.”
Additive Manufacturing and the Provide Chain
The CEO of Würth Additive Group, outlined how his firm’s “Digital Stock Companies” software program addresses the realities of additive provide chains. “The software program is constructed to flex from quite simple manufacturing components to complicated variants,” he mentioned. It manages every part from ERP integration to high quality management, tailoring compliance workflows to the character of every part. “Most corporations don’t need each half to undergo the identical QA as a turbine blade. That’s an excessive amount of overhead.”
Strandquist added that additive’s best operational benefit might lie in distributed manufacturing. Würth serves over 4 million prospects, with 700,000 working in auto service centres globally, a lot of which require specialised service instruments which can be troublesome to supply as a result of commerce obstacles or lengthy logistics chains. “By printing domestically to standardised benchmarks, we’ve helped purchasers remove as much as 30% of dealing with prices,” he mentioned. “As a substitute of importing instruments and coping with customs classifications, they’ll produce and certify them in-country.”
Stacey Eeman of SME added that additive’s most transformative affect might lie in its potential to answer constraints—be it workforce shortages in welding or provide chain complexity in medical and protection logistics. “Level-of-use manufacturing in healthcare means greater than it does even for sustainment instructions,” she mentioned. “The sort of manufacturing provides us a method to act when conventional strategies can’t.”
Additive Manufacturing Executives Hyperlink Sustainability to On-Demand Manufacturing and Course of Simplification
Sustainability is more and more turning into a quantifiable differentiator for additive manufacturing leaders. The CEO of Würth Additive Group, argued that AM’s potential to localize manufacturing provides measurable environmental and operational benefits. “We changed imported stock with on-site additive manufacturing in a port metropolis, utilizing the identical logistics community,” he mentioned. “The outcome was a 20% lower in complete emissions. However the true affect exhibits up in emergency logistics. I’ve had prospects put components on planes—actually fly with them—as a result of a $2 bolt lacking can halt a $100,000 operation.”
Stratasys is “working with OEMs like Airbus to align additive with long-term sustainability aims,” mentioned Foster Ferguson. “Localising manufacturing, notably in depots and shipyards, isn’t just a inexperienced technique—it’s a resilience technique.”
As Tyler Reid of GoEngineer put it, “Sustainability must be constructed into the ROI, not bolted on.” Stacey Eeman of SME highlighted how “Clear manufacturing is attracting younger individuals with imaginative minds,” she mentioned. “Now it’s as much as us to supply the alternatives and pathways to convey them in.”
Promising alternatives for additive manufacturing now lie in its potential to scale back emissions by way of distributed manufacturing, compress lead occasions through course of consolidation, and unlock innovation by eradicating obstacles to design and training. Sustainability, typically handled as a advertising and marketing differentiator, is turning into a measurable enter to operational and procurement technique. On the similar time, the sector faces strain to simplify adoption, standardise processes, and broaden past its aerospace and protection consolation zone. As applied sciences like AI speed up accessibility, the approaching wave of adoption could also be formed much less by machine specs and extra by usability, interoperability, and the power to serve a broader industrial base.
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Featured picture the AMUG Convention 2025, the view from the highest. Photograph by Michael Petch.
